Truths in Tension
The Bible clearly teaches the Sovereignty of God. Yet, throughout the Bible it is also clear that every human is responsible to respond to his/her God-given gifts. And, there cannot be a real responsibility without a real choice. This freedom to choose, however, does not mean that the one who must choose has the power to make the right choice. Nobody will or can seek God without the re-creating work of the Holy Spirit.
The difficulty comes with trying to keep God’s Sovereignty and the human responsibility together. It’s like trying to create a flat map from a spherical globe; you must resort to some stretching or cutting to make it work. The human mind frame is too small to keep some apparently contradictory truths together. Or, it’s like juggling two balls -like a blue and an orange ball- with one hand. If we focus our attention mostly on the blue ball, we can easily drop the orange one and vice versa. Unless we insist on balance, we may well end up holding on to our favorite ball, while we lose sight of the other one.
Consequently, theologians frequently focus mostly on human responsibility (as in Arminianism) and freedom or put the primary focus on the Sovereignty of God.
The first approach invariably results in the chipping away from the Sovereignty of God. Philip Yancey, for instance, argues that God took a risk when he left the final decision (for obedience and faith) totally and only up to human beings. R.C. Sproul argued that this cannot be. Even if there were one atom in the whole universe outside of God’s control, there could not be a guarantee that God’s Kingdom would ever be restored. In this (Arminian) camp, consistent reasoning can lead to the heresy of Pelagius or the Open Theism of Clark Pinnock.
The second approach tends to view humanity and people in a static way as either elect or reprobate; there is no real well-meant offer for all people, for God cannot ‘mean well’ or show mercy to the reprobates. If Arminianism thrives in the more liberal churches, forms of Hyper-Calvinism are not uncommon in Reformed churches. Personally, I have heard and fought church leaders argue that ‘It is totally wrong to talk about ‘accepting’ Christ as only He can accept us. Or, that you cannot sing “I have decided to follow Jesus”, for it was only God’s decision to make us follow him. Once I was challenged in a church council meeting because I hold that ‘faith’ is not only a gift of God, it is just as much the work of the regenerated person. Another time, a former Protestant Reformed member argued I could not teach the young people since I had written that the Holy Spirit also works in the unregenerate. 1
This approach typically leads to the presumption or assumption that all church members are true believers so that there rarely or never is a call to real self-examination. Some thereby equate covenant and election, believing that in infant baptism the Holy Spirit guarantees the babies and their parents that he will dwell in them and sanctify them so that they will live with God forever. Others warn their congregants, who outwardly live like Christians not to partake of the communion unless they have received a personal revelation to assure them that they are elect. Sadly, many are thus prevented to embrace the promises of God, which are also for them and come to real faith. Thank God, the men who started The Gospel Coalition have grasped these ‘truths in tension’. I would recommend Don Carson’s ‘Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility’2 and his ‘The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God’3
Reasoning from a Predestination Perspective
Although ultimately God’s sovereignty must imply predestination, this cannot be our primary perspective of evaluating human beings. In daily life it does not work for us, for the man who is known as a wonderful servant of God may yet end up in hell, and the one whom we see as the greatest of all sinners may actually be saved by the powerful re-creative work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, even if we know that predestination is a fact, we cannot use this perspective in practical ministry.
Neither does the Bible approach people from an eternal-decree perspective. Rather, it sees people as recipients of God’s good gifts and at each level there are those who receive the gifts in loving thankfulness and voluntary service and others, who do not do so and refuse to seek their gracious Father-King.
North likes the Protestant Reformed view, expressed and promoted by Herman Hoeksema. This starts with God’s sovereignty -and therefore with predestination, whereby there is little or no room left for a well-meant Gospel offer 4 or a love for a demon-possessed pagan girl. If God just loves some and hates the others, why did he show compassion with or look with pity on the Samaritan woman at the well or the multitude in Nineveh?5 North argues that ‘The perfect love of God necessarily involves the perfect hatred of God’s enemies.’ Jonah could only see the wicked city as ‘God’s enemies’, but God taught him that his thinking is too simplistic, for God still showed pity as he looked upon his ‘children’ there. Did God love or hate King Saul? The end of the story shows him as a reprobate, but does that mean that God did not love him when he blessed him in his younger years? Samuel, the man of God, loved Saul, but he also had to adjust his views to see that Saul actually hated God. How could Jesus love to gather the prophet-killing ‘Jerusalem’?6 If we see people only in an absolute love-hate division, we have not grasped the difficult doctrine of the love of God.
North refers to Romans 12:20, where Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21-22, as the best revelation on God’s attitude to the Romans’ enemies. Although the image of ‘burning coals’ to be piled on the sinner’s head refers to judgment, it must also serve to bring him to repentance and faith. We, too, must love our enemies in the realization that also we were at one time God’s enemies and while we were in that state, God lavished his love on us. How do we know whether our display of love towards others may be used by the Spirit to make sinners turn to the Source of love!? God does want us to proclaim the Good News (!) to all, and he wants its recipients, the hearers, to accept the Word and be reconciled with (their true Father) God!
The Difficult Doctrine
According to Gary North, God has and shows no love for those whom he did not elect for his ‘effective grace’. Klaas Schilder agreed with Herman Hoeksema that ‘common grace’ was merely a postponement of judgment, and therefore he did not want to talk of common ‘grace’. Yet, when the Protestant Reformed churches made this approach a doctrinal prerequisite in their 1951 ‘Brief Declaration of Principles’, Schilder no longer recommended the Liberated Reformed emigrants to Canada to join this denomination.
He wrote a series of articles, later published as a brochure, called ‘Extra-scriptural Binding- a New Danger’.7 Gary North suggests that the gifts for the reprobates are undeserved, thus gracious gifts, but finds that ‘favor’ implies sympathy or love. And, if God hates the reprobates with perfect hatred, there cannot be any room for love. And yet, North does speak about God’s love for the reprobate,8 but this ‘love’ is defined as negative in its emotional attachment, and also judicial. Instead of blessings, there are only wrathful curses.
To some degree this can be an issue of semantics, but -as I suggested before- North’s concept of the love of God is too simplistic. It follows from human reasoning, which grabs hold of God’s Sovereignty and predestination, and thereby must limit God’s love for his children, whom have not (yet) turned to Him.
For support, North refers to Romans 9:13, where God is quoted through Malachi’s prophecy, “Esau I have hated”, but what would happen if he did the same thing with Luke 14:26, where Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple”? Allow me to give some very relevant and insightful quotes from D.A. Carson’s booklet ‘The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God.’
In the first chapter, Carson describes five different kinds of ‘love of God’. The third one refers to the fallen world. John 3:16: God so loved the world that he sacrificed his Son.
“I know that some try to take KOSMOS (“world”) here to refer to the elect. But that really will not do. All the evidence of the usage of the word in John’s Gospel is against the suggestion”… In John’s vocabulary, world is primarily the moral order in willful and culpable rebellion against God. In John 3:16 God’s love in sending the Lord Jesus is to be admired … because it is extended to such a bad thing, … to such wicked people.9 To rebels the sovereign Lord calls out, “As surely as I live…I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?” 10
“It is easy to see what will happen if any of these five biblical ways of talking about the love of God is absolutized and made exclusive, or made the controlling grid by which the other ways of talking about the love of God are relativized.” “If the love of God refers exclusively to his love for the elect, it is easy to drift toward a simple and absolute bifurcation: God loves the elect and hates the reprobate. Rightly positioned, there is truth in this assertion; stripped of complementary biblical truths, that same assertion has engendered hyper-Calvinism. I use the term advisedly, referring to groups within the Reformed tradition that have forbidden the free offer of the Gospel.” 11
1 Stephen, for instance, warns the unreopentant Jews to stop resisting the Holy Spirit. Acts 7:51.
2 D.A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility- Biblical perspectives in tension. Baker Books, 1994.
3 D.A. Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Crossway, 1999.
4 https://www.amazon.com/Well-Meant-Gospel-Offer-H-Hoeksema-Schilder/dp/B000ZEXJXG, and The Covenant of Grace Revisited
5 Jonah 5:11.
6 Matthew 23:37.
7 Inheritance Publications, 1996.
8 Dominion, p. 205.
9 D.A. The Difficult Doctrine, p. 17.
10 Ezekiel 33:11; Carson, p.18.
11 Carson, p. 21, 22.
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